Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Hindy Najman

copyists at Qumran.^6 Along these lines, Martha Himmelfarb suggests that "the

existence [at Qumran] of a work or works labeled Pseudo-Jubilees (4Q225-27)

indicates that Jubilees was of sufficient stature to warrant imitation."^7 Beyond

that, we cannot say for sure that it was authoritative for any second temple

community, much as in the case of the earliest Enochic writings.

It is very hard to determine the reception and dissemination of texts

within second temple Judaism. But how then are we to label this work we

call Jubilees? Under what category should it be subsumed? Having rejected

"rewritten Bible," or "new Torah," or even "interpretation," I will offer a very

simple and perhaps obvious alternative. It is not that I think these labels are

in all senses inadequate for understanding aspects of the materials or tradi­

tions found in Jubilees. Rather, I think that each is inadequate for character­

izing the book as a whole. Moreover, each betrays, in its own way, what Rob­

ert Kraft has called "the tyranny of canonical assumptions."^8

The alternative I want to recommend is at once both obvious and

bound to be provocative. If we are to characterize Jubilees as a whole, we

should pay attention to its self-presentation. The book claims to be revela­

tory and to have a divine, angelic, and heavenly origin. It is, by its own ac­

count, part of the larger family of works from earlier exilic and postexilic

traditions that we have come to know as biblical prophecy. My claim, then, is

that Jubilees should be contextualized within the traditions of biblical

prophecy, especially exilic and postexilic prophecy.

One source of resistance is easily anticipated, for the well-rehearsed

claims that prophecy ended are very familiar to us all. But these claims —

that prophecy ceases and that apocalyptic or wisdom literature emerges in­

stead — simply do not resonate with the texts we have from late ancient Ju­

daism. For the texts repeatedly make claims to be prophetic, and more

broadly, to be revelatory. Of course, throughout late ancient Judean tradi­

tions, claims of persistent revelation are made in many different ways. But

this reflects the variety we see in earlier Israelite and contemporaneous non-

Israelite and non-Judean religious traditions. Angelic revelation and medi­

ated intervention, human access to heavenly writings, symbolic prophecy,

6. See J. C. VanderKam, "Authoritative Literature in the Dead Sea Scrolls," DSD 5, no.

3 (1998): 382-402, and E. C. Ulrich, "The Bible in the Making: The Scriptures Found at

Qumran," in The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation, ed. P. W. Flint (Grand

Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 51-66.

7. Himmelfarb, A Kingdom of Priests, 53.

8. R. A. Kraft, "Para-mania: Beside, Before, and Beyond Bible Studies," JBL 126 (2007):

5-V.